Hello and welcome to the 12th Tech Tuesday, where you ask the questions and the community provides the answer. Ask any question that you have! If you have a question regarding a [Build Ready], please provide the link to the thread to keep clutter down. No question is stupid in this thread so ask away!

Did you mean FX-4100 or FX-4170, not 8120? I know the 8120 isn't popular for gaming, but it's a good CPU for things like video encoding, VMs, development, etc.

Between the Phenom and i3, many in here say i3-2120, but I feel very strongly about sticking with the Phenom II X4 965. Why is that? Well, even though each Sandy Bridge core is stronger than a Deneb core, having four physical cores makes a bigger difference in the long run. Not only does it allow you to more easily multitask, but more and more games are being developed to run on more than two cores. As more cores become the norm, having those additional physical cores will balance out the stronger, but fewer cores the i3 has. Not only that, but the 965 overclocks incredibly well. You should be able to pretty easily hit around 4GHz with a good mobo.

Also, if you're looking at those CPUs, odds are you're on a budget. Tom's Hardware showed that the FX-4100 and i3-2100 are pretty much neck and neck when it comes to gaming with a mid range video card and the same story with the FX-4170 and i3-3220 with a high end card. Keep in mind that the Phenom is actually a stronger CPU than the FX-4100.

You way also wait until the end of the month and check out the Vishera (Piledriver) reviews. The FX line is getting a refresh. From the initial info it looks like the new cores are finally on par with Phenom. If that's the case I'd go with the newer CPU.

This usually is just for general airflow throughout the case. The front case fans are typically at the bottom of the front face, which is the best spot (typically) for pulling in cooler air because warmer air wants to rise. The air brought in from these fans makes it's way towards the graphics card, in any well designed case, which is one of the two most important spots for cooling.

These fans kinda just get put here because there isn't a better spot to get air from the front of the case. You will see some cases like the NZXT Switch 810 that have fans behind the hard drive bays that direct air more closely to the graphics card area of the motherboard.

To answer your question: No. The hard drives really don't need much cooling at all but they are just so located near the front of the case.

EDIT: I render image sequences out of 3D programs quite a lot which can mean data writing for up to a few hours at a time and I've never seen either of my drives get above 32C when my ambient is 25-27C

It might be. But look at where else they could go. With the motherboard and everything else in the same place, there isn't anywhere else to really move it. Maybe behind the Disc Drive? Then it starts to cramp the area where the motherboard 24-pin goes and begins to affect airflow to the cpu/ram/vrm's. That wouldn't be a good idea. You can't move them much closer to the psu because not every one is modular so there comes the issue of cables and drives sharing the same space.

You would kinda have to get motherboards or cases with a different layout to really be able to support putting the hard drives somewhere else.

On top of what everyone else said, I'll just put this out there. The tl;dr is that drive temperature does not really correlate to drive failure at all, and where it does it turns out that cooler drives are more likely to fail than warmer ones.

The general consensus is that they are awesome because you are getting a $800 monitor for around $350. From what I hear the Pixel Perfect models don't come with any dead pixels and is not much more, so definitely worth it. Now the problem that arises with these monitors is that you essentially sacrifice any sort of customer support and the RMA process in the case of a bad monitor is a pain the ass. Catleaps seem to be the most popular from what I've been reading though.

Great displays for the price, but the housings are very cheap and they typically exhibit some form of defect. If something goes wrong you're not going to enjoy dealing with a Korean eBay store who can barely speak English.

"Perfect Pixel" variants are guaranteed to have no dead pixels, but they may still have poor colour reproduction/tinting issues. It's worth noting that most of the regular versions don't have dead pixels (at least according the overclockers thread on the Yamakasi Catleap) so paying the premium for a perfect pixel version is debatable value.

I want to add, that even if you have a dead pixel, you really really really need to look hard to see it. I went 4 months before I noticed my dead pixel, and I need to search for it to find it again. Perhaps my eyesight is failing, but a dead pixel on a 1920x1080 monitor sticks out like a sore thumb while this one is barely noticeable.

I've heard a lot of people saying that, which makes me consider buying one. That said, while I couldn't spot any dead pixels on my friends "Achieva Shimian" there was a noticeable yellow tint towards the bottom right of the display visible on white backgrounds.

Yeah, the color shift and light bleed can be somewhat atrocious and varies greatly from one monitor to another. I bought my panel from Microcenter as I could just return it if there was any serious problems. It cost a bit more, and I had to pay taxes, but I didn't want to be stuck with a $300 paperweight if I got a truly terrible one direct from Korea.

The important thing to remember is to make sure your BIOS is set to AHCI or RAID mode before installing on your hdd.

These modes are important to get the best performance from your SSD. If you do an image copy and change this setting afterwards, you will not be able to boot the Win7 partition and have to do a fresh install.

When it came time to install an SSD in my machine, I went with a clean install. Some problems may pop up if all you do is transfer the OS from one hard drive to another, and I didn't want to risk that. After the OS install on the SSD, I didn't format my HDD, I just deleted everything on it except for music, pictures, and videos. Had to re-install all programs and games, which was a pain. It was one afternoon worth of work, but it was worth it to install right.

In fact most PC components are a lot tougher than you might realise. I've never bothered with anti-static precautions and haven't had any issues at all. My friend even dropped his CPU down the back of a radiator and it still works fine.

I asked this question a couple of times but didn't really get any decent answers. I am living and studying in Canada, and putting together a new PC in January. My dad is visiting the US and he has easy access to a Microcenter. If I get him to pick me up the CPU + mobo bundle (i5 3570k + UD3H) from Microcenter in US and then put it into the rest of my build in January in Canada, will I have any issues with RMA in the event of something being DOA? Will I be able to get the RMA through Intel or Gigabyte, or will I have to ship it back to Microcenter in the US? Should i just buy everything in Canada? I will be saving about ~$100 if I can get it from Microcenter. Thanks

I wouldn't do it. Two reasons: 1) There could be difficulties with RMA 2) Buy everything +- at same time, or at least buy GPU, CPU, HDD, MOBO and RAM last, 'cause they tend to get cheaper quite quickly.

I'll ask for my friend because he asked me and I didn't know the answer.
He got an SSD following me getting one, though he got an A-Data despite the suggestions I've given him. Anyways, he's having troubles with the computer going to sleep and not fully waking back up. There appears to be no video out once this happens. I'd like some suggestions to give to him. I tried power management on my own but I didn't quite get if it was set to never sleep. I'd like suggestions beyond that though.

any drawbacks to having the gpu powered from 2 different wires? built a pc for/with a friend a few days ago with a thermaltake smart 650w (semi modular) and a sapphire 7870. problem is the PSUs cables for the gpu were 6+2 and 8 pin. i modular and 1 not. so the only thing i could do was put in the 6 pin from both in the gpu. anything to worry about

Intel® recommends using memory that adheres to the Jedec memory specification for DDR3 memory which is 1.5 volts, plus or minus 5%. Anything more than this voltage can damage the processor or significantly reduce the processor life span.

Like zyx said, it's 1.5v +/-5%. So far, I haven't seen anyone run into problems with higher voltage RAM, but there's a reason they recommend that voltage. Unlike the past where the memory controller was on the mobo, it's now on the CPU die. Intel recommends lower voltage RAM for two reasons. First off is longevity of the system. If the voltage is too high, you run the risk of burning out the memory controller (IMC) and, as a result, killing your CPU. Like I said, I haven't seen any confirmed cases of this, but it's a CPU safety issue. Second is stability. If the voltage is too high it can add stress to the IMC and if it's too low, the IMC may not work properly and you'll have an unstable system.

I bought the card in 09, and haven't had any issues with it before. In fact, when I first bought it, it was still around the time right before the release of Cataclysm. I did notice that after Cat was released my temps started to increase. When I first built the system, I could run the 10 man raids, full bore, 100% Ultra, with minimal FPS loss and temps were normal.

Is your PC somewhat clean of dust? (and especially the heatsink and fan on the card). 90 C isn't great but it shouldn't cause problems. These cards throttle around ~100 Celsius or so. Shutdown point is probably close after that.

Ya, it is usually pretty well dust free. I have it up and out of the way. I will be heading in to get more air today, and then Im going to blast the thing once again. Its funny that it only does this with WoW though. I play League, I play SC, I play DotA, and on all those games the card never freaks out and goes above 90.

One other very unlikely but possible cause is that the heatsink might be very slightly loose and not making as good contact as it could with the GPU. Maybe try to check that the screws are reasonably tightened down.

So the heat isn't an issue? I have read somewhere that hitting those temps can be dangerous. The funny part is, when I go into WoW, the "recommended" settings show that I can run things at Ultra, or that I "should". When I do, the frames drop to about 10-12 FPS, and the heat jumps up to about 100C.

My understanding is yes it can be an issue in terms of the cards lifespan and overall health. But since your card is older, you don't need to worry way to much about its lifespan. What I am trying to say is don't panic about it but start looking into new cards if you have the cash to spare.

I have an old 4890 about = to the 5770 in performance and it can get hot. I will have to check specific temps later.

Also check your Case's airflow.

EDIT: Paying better attention.

EDIT2: I run WoW on Ultra on my 4890 at 1920x1200 and it runs well enough without my GPU blowing up... My GPU cannot really handle those settings. It will get skippy when too much is going on, but the GPU stays cool-ish.

The airflow is pretty open. I have my two back fans running fine, and the tops and side are working well. I clean it about once to twice a month. Should I be doing it more often. I usually force the fan to 100% when I am running WoW, just to make sure it stays in the sub-90's. I don't know what the maximum temps are on the card, and I have done quite a bit of searching. But over 95C cant possibly be good for it at long times.

Settings in WoW are at the "Good" stage. I have the view distance maxed to Ultra, but outside of that everything is noted under "Good"

This is the build I'm looking at.
We would record and do all playback with Windows Media Center(WMC). My questions are is trinity strong enough to hand up to 4 or 5 HD playbacks at a time?
Also does anyone have any experience with tuner cards and WMC instead of cable boxes?

Playback for 2 of the TV's will be through our Xbox's. Looks like ill need to trans-code in order to playback, if I'm doing this to multiple sources at once should I beef up the CPU?

Also coming from a Comcast DVR will a normal 7200rpm HD be fine comparably or is a SSD really recommended?

Both are great choices. Thanks to the IPS panel the viewing angles on the Dell are better. The general build quality is better to, the base stand is very solid and offers a great amount of adjustment options.

The BenQ got a VA panel, which has an advantage with the better contrast ratio (deeper blacks). It's cheaper too.

In terms of input lag, ghosting and image quality both are equally fine.

I've recently installed an HIS IceQ 7950 and I've spent the last couple of days learning how to overclock it. However, as I incrementally increased the GPU clock speed and power draw, I noticed that only the power draw increases were improving my frame rate in furmark.

I went from around 31fps at 0% default power draw to 52fps at max draw (20%). These results came from running furmark at 1080p full screen with 0x AA.

No change in GPU or VRAM clock speed seems to make even a single fps of difference in furmark. I've overclocked the GPU to about 950GHz, which is far as I can get without tweaking the voltage before furmark starts crashing. Can someone explain what's going on here?

I have a connectivity issue at my house. I currently have Roadrunner Turbo(20 down, 2 up) and am having connectivity issues. By "issues" I mean my connection will go from good to none throughout the day, especially when I'm downloading or playing games.

I've had the cable company out twice; they did some checks and ran a new, dedicated line. I've also replaced my router, along with the modem the cable company gave me.

Even after all that, my connection still drops frequently. I understand the way nodes work and also understand I will get slower speeds during high traffic times, but losing signal completely?

My roommate has a 320gb secondary drive in his computer that's begun to heat up. It has a fan in front of it, and still gets to 54 degrees, even though his gpu is at maybe 38 and court at 35. Anything we can try to do, or is the hard drive just dying?

He's got an Amy CPU, don't know which one (in case that helps at all). The dying drive is 320 gb WD, I believe.

will a noctua nh-d14 fit over my ripjaws x memory?, it's a asroxk z77 extreme 4 mobo. Just thought i'd ask because i'm not sure there is clearance and it's not worth buying one only for it to be useless.

I know this isn't /r/suggestalaptop but can anybody say whether or not current $300-400 laptops can handle HD streaming (720p, not expecting it to have a 1080p screen)? I basically just want something I can watch twitch.tv or netflix on during my lunch breaks at work and have for dedicated skype at home (so I'm not always alt+tabbing out of games).

I do not need my processor to last since I'm going to college in a couple years. Chances are I will want to build a computer again.
Do I buy a kickass cooling system I will reuse for builds to come and perform severe overclock on an older CPU to save $ or just buy a slightly better CPU with that $ and not overclock.
I am on a tight budget (as low as possible, around 300), looking to game and have a copy of windows.

Typically, your cooling systems (CPU cooler) are chipset series specific, so you may not be able to use the cooler on a different chip. I would recommend putting that money into a better processor and not overclock.

The issues that it has is that I have no idea how you would do the USB passthrough, could you just buy a chip with a USB input on it and then plug it into the motherboard? Also, I'm not sure where you would put the power button to turn it on. The whole wooden case thing is odd, but I can't find a case that this would fit in. Also, finding a laptop power supply, or some sort of rechargeable power supply, that has the power to run this is proving challenging. Finally, I don't know how or where the touch screen fits into this equation, could you do it through HDMI?

New computer, just assembled, turn it on and the power comes on for a second, stops, comes on in about 5 seconds, repeat.

Tested the power supply, ram, and video card on my old machine, and this message is proof of their workability.

I seated the processor correctly, triangle with triangle. Heatsink was installed correctly, not that the processor had a chance to heat up. Ram was installed as per the manual, Power cables where they needed to be, cpu fan in it's home, all that jazz. My assumption is that there's a fault in the mobo, but would like the opinion of wiser builders before I RMA it.

OK I know wireless headsets are sort of the devil on this Subreddit and most other enthusiastic place but I really don't want to deal with wires coming across my desk and the always suggested Zalman mic doesn't perform near as well as my friends G930 over teamspeak.

Anyone have any suggestions for a $100-$130 wireless headset? Also a question if I turn off the headset does it automatically switch back to my speakers?

One of my big things with wired, other than it just being wired and generally that sucks for me (tower is on my desk so the long cords tend to go everywhere) is that in order for me to switch back to external speakers easily I'm going to need to use a switch and that's another $50 for decent a decent quality one. Putting $150 headphones into it seems like a bad idea.

Generally speaking the 7970 outperforms the 670 (and that is without overclocking). But there are certain games (BF3, Borderlands 2, Batman Arkham City, e.g. anything using PhysX) that will perform better with the 670.

So i've recently built my first computer and it was all a great success. More recently, i've been toying with the idea of an Eyefinity 3 monitor setup. Currently i've got:
i3 3220 cpu
HIS 7770 gpu
8 gigs of ram
450w psu

I'd like to be able to run BF3 on the 3 monitors. Currently i can run it on 2, but that's kind of pointless with an fps game..

Would this be possible by upgrading my gpu to maybe a 7850 or 7870? If i did upgrade the gpu, would my cpu and psu be able to handle it?
Are the 7850/7870 capable of running bf3 on 3 monitors smoothly?
Thanks a lot /buildapc !

I'm looking to upgrade from my Notebook to a new PC. But the approximate costs that I am looking at is ~ $1500. Which is a decent chunk of change to sink at the moment heading up to X-mas and I will be heading overseas.

Now I have found some items for cheaper while shopping around, saving $20-$30.

Unfortunately because I am moving from a notebook I don't have any monitor or case to bring over... which really adds to the cost of my first build.

My question is should I build in stages, getting full quality parts on my case / mobo / monitor (get a cheaper graphics card + cpu + storage - and then upgrade sometime next year). Or is is better to just wait it out, at the moment my current hardware is really bumping up against current games. I would like to try playing CS:GO at > 20-40 fps - which is my current predicament. I also play a bit of Skyrim and would like to experience it at 1920x1080 with all settings maxed etc.

Try to build at one go. Over time pc parts drop in price, and new stuff comes out, you don't always want to a step behind so to speak.

that being said, components like a solid PSU, case, and maybe a HDD can be picked up at anytime if you find a nice deal; the tend to work from build to build anyway and not depreciate as much as other parts.

He's doing fine. The last I heard he was still looking for a work, the job market being what it is. But you know Haswell, always worries about everything but things usually end up going his way anyway.

Nothing wrong at all with using sleep mode. It's good to reboot occasionally (maybe weekly or monthly, and when it's needed e.g. for an update) but there's nothing at all wrong with using sleep/standby/suspend mode. It's been around and supported in computers for over 10 years now I believe.

Quantity of VRAM is just like system RAM. You either have enough for the games + resolutions they're played at, or you don't. If you don't, you get major frame rate drops. If you have more than enough, adding more doesn't improve performance at all.

Then once you have enough, all the other factors come into play for performance: how fast the graphics processor is, how much memory bandwidth it has (to the VRAM), what parts of the card certain games put more stress on, etc. This is just a simplification but it should give you a good idea.

Okay. Does amount of VRAM play an important factor between two levels of cards? For example, a 2GB 7770 or a 1GB 6850? Would the 6850 run into issues the 7770 would not due to it having that one less GB of VRAM??

Not in this type of scenario, because the graphics processors in both of those cards aren't that fast, so even if there would be a performance drop due to insufficient VRAM, it would be overshadowed by the card's lack processing power not being fast enough to matter. Those cards are for gaming up to a resolution of 1920x1200 max, and at that resolution, hardly any game really needs more VRAM (with a few notable exceptions like Skyrim with the HD textures pack).

Also, 2GB 7770 costs as much as 1GB 7850, which will outperform it the vast majority of the time.

I'm planning on doing a build with an i5-3570k sometime early next year. Its going to be a straight gaming build is this the best processor for that. Or is there another that will allow me to upgrade more easily in the future? Ive heard the upgrade path for that socket is a dead end but i was thinking that by the time its really obsolete it would probably be time to get a new motherboard anyway.

Hi, my buddy recently got his gaming PC back as he went to college and couldnt bring it his first trip. Well now when ever he is playing online and say an iTunes update starts itself, the PC will disconnect from w/e game and any other internet based application and wont be able to reconnect until after said download is finished. So basically it can only run one application the requires internet connection at a time. Any thought?

I am about to get another monitor of the exact same type. Currently the DVI output is through my Graphics Card. Does it matter whether the second (possibly third in the future) needs to also plug into the graphics card? Can it be plugged into the motherboards DVI port. Are there advantages to either or is it relatively the same?

With newer video cards and motherboards you should be able to configure so it doesn't really matter - assuming you have the right combination of parts. Can't tell unless you post specifically what you have.

Upgrading the cpu on a gaming rig. Going from AMD 450 Rana to either a 965 Deneb or Six Core Thuban. Is it worth it to spend the extra money on the six core chip? Would I notice a big performance increase to justify the expense?

No, hexa-cores are pointless for gaming. In fact, you'll hardly notice any difference in most games between the Athlon II x3 450 and a Phenom II x4 965, depending on your video card (what do you have?) and the game in question. At best, you might see ~10-20% performance gain, which may or may not be worth it to you for the ~$90-100 price of the 965. At worst, no difference at all.